SAT® Writing and Language Tips - Part 1

The SAT® Writing and Language section is arguably the most predictable section on the SAT® and thus one of the easiest ones to learn how to increase your accuracy in. Here are a few tips that helped me get a perfect score on this section twice.

Tip 1: Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-Verb Agreement essentially means that in order for a sentence to make sense, both the subject and the verb have to be in the same tense and plurality. This means that the subject and verb both have to be singular or plural, and both have to be past, present, or future tense.

These questions can become difficult when the SAT® decides to input prepositional phrases or clauses in between the subject and verb.

For example:

Yet some of the earliest known works of art, including paintings and drawings tens of thousands of years old found on cave walls, portrays animals.

It may be easy to think that it is the paintings and drawings that correspond with portrays, but in fact, it is works of art. We can help solve this question by getting rid of the clause:

Yet some of the earliest known works of art portrays animals. The plural of portrays is portray and so we can change the answer to portray.

Tip 2: Appositive and Clauses - Commas

One of the grammar rules that always gave me the hardest time was whether or not to put a comma around an adjective or appositive phrase.

For example:

The London-based artist Slinkachu painted pictures of everyday artists.

(The question asked if there should be commas around Slinkachu)

Essentially, whenever you are given such a question, you should only put commas around the word or phrase if you can remove the word or phrase and the sentence will still make sense.

In the above example, removing Slinkachu removes the subject of the sentence and so we are not allowed to place commas around the word Slinkachu. Additionally, getting rid of the "London-based artist" takes away an important detail in the sentence, so we are also not supposed to put commas around that phrase as well.

Tip 4: Reading the Sentence

When double-checking your work, often one of the easiest ways to tell if an answer is wrong or if you selected a wrong answer is reading the whole passage through using the answer choices that you chose. Often, if an answer is incorrect, the passage will feel weird, awkward, or unnatural as your language skills recognize that something is inherently wrong with the sentence. If the sentence still flows, then it is likely correct.

One important thing to consider is that this is only a good method to pick out any obviously wrong answers. It is still good to check answers you were unsure of a bit more closely as this is not a 100% foolproof checking method.

Tip 5: Shortest Answers

Another tip on the SAT® is that when a question asks to replace a phrase, it is often the shortest answer that is correct because the test is testing you to see if you can write concisely. Grammatically, this is often because the longer phrases that the SAT® provides are redundant and provide information already stated previously in the sentence or passage or use adjectives that are synonyms.

Although this true in almost every situation, there are still rare cases where this is not always true and this often occurs when two adjectives are used that are both relevant and essential to the sentence but have different meanings. I have personally only come across one example of this type of situation, but it is still important to exercise caution.